Donald Trump

[Code]

13 hours ago, Tarwater said:

Code as well barely survived a vote of no confidence in his own party. He can also be ... assertive in his tastes. Code or Trump, you decide: Even in elementary school, I was a very assertive, aggressive kid. In the second grade I actually gave a teacher a black eye - I punched my music teacher because I didn't think he knew anything about music and I almost got expelled. I'm not proud of that, but it's clear evidence that even early on I had a tendency to stand up and make my opinions known in a very forceful way."

Paul, I think I told you, I'm a lover not a fighter.

[Gnasher]

In fairness to the Donald he's blessed us with youngsters for a lovely future. Jared, Ivanka, Donald Jr and Eric are the type of kids you just take to, 

 

 

https://www.politicususa.com/2021/01/14/donald-trump-jr-investigation.html/amp?__twitter_impression=true

[Jennings]

Trump explodes at Nixon comparisons as he prepares to leave office

Updated 8:28 PM EST January 14, 2021

In his final days in office, President Donald Trump has found the parts of the job he loved replaced by cold legal warnings, forced video addresses and a shrinking circle of downtrodden aides, all anxiously wondering what life will be like after noon on January 20.

Gone are the clicks of flashing cameras. Absent is the roar of a cheering crowd. Instead of a commanding final full week of winning, the President is playing the role of victim and not a gracious leader departing office. 

Trump has been consumed by the unraveling of his presidency during his last days in office, according to people around him, which included a casual discussion among advisers recently about a possible resignation. 

Trump shut the idea down almost immediately. And he has made clear to aides in separate conversations that mere mention of President Richard Nixon, the last president to resign, were banned. 

He told one adviser during an expletive-laden conversation recently never to bring up the ex-president ever again. During the passing mention of resigning this week, Trump told people he couldn't count on Vice President Mike Pence to pardon him like Gerald Ford did Nixon, anyway.

Eager for a final taste of the pomp of being president, Trump has asked for a major send-off on Inauguration Day next week, according to people familiar with the matter, before one last presidential flight to Palm Beach. 

But the signs of his impending departure are everywhere -- including right outside his window. Workers hung bunting Thursday that read "2021 Biden-Harris Inauguration" from temporary stands across from the White House North Portico. It was visible from his third-story residence.

Inside the building, Trump has been weathering a second impeachment and growing isolation from his onetime allies in sullen desolation. He has grown more and more worried about what legal or financial calamities may await him when he is no longer president, people who have spoken to him said, fueled by warnings from lawyers and advisers. He is weighing pardons, including for himself and his family, as he attempts to muster a legal team for another impeachment trial. And he is resentful of Republicans who he feels abandoned him in his hour of need, including the GOP leaders of the House and Senate.

Aides have pleaded with Trump to deliver some type of farewell address, either live or taped, that would tick through his accomplishments in office. But he has appeared disinterested and noncommittal. On Thursday, it was Pence carrying out tasks ordinarily left to a president, like visiting national guardsmen posted at the US Capitol or visiting White House operators to say farewell.

Closing up shop

With less than a week left in office, Trump's staff is preparing to leave the White House campus for a final time. Many officials have already departed, but those who are still coming into the office have focused on the offboarding process and packing up their offices. There were signs of moving activity Thursday, including a gray van from the fine art movers Crozier. Debbie Meadows, the wife of the chief of staff, was spotted carrying out a stuffed pheasant from her husband's office and loading it into her car.

The upstairs of the White House press shop now sits virtually empty. Desks where assistants used to sit outside the office of the press secretary are now vacant, with the exception of boxes and stacks of documents. Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who has been largely invisible during the final days of the Trump White House, has also started packing up her office. 

One of Trump's Cabinet officials, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, appeared on television from Palm Beach. Another official, National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow, received applause from junior aides as he left the building.

As one of their final acts, Trump's team is working to organize a crowd to see him off on the morning of Biden's inauguration, when he plans to depart Washington while still president and is expecting a major send-off. Even though some of his allies had encouraged him to attend Biden's inauguration, and Trump quizzed his circle on whether he should, few ever expected him to participate in the swearing-in of his successor.

Trump told people he did not like the idea of departing Washington for a final time as an ex-president, flying aboard an airplane no longer known as Air Force One. He also did not particularly like the thought of requesting the use of the plane from Biden, according to a person familiar with the matter.

For now, Trump is undecided on whether he will pen a letter to Biden to leave in the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. Some of his advisers have encouraged him to think about continuing the tradition. Early in his presidency, Trump liked to show off to visitors the letter he received from President Barack Obama, which included the now-prescient line: "Regardless of the push and pull of daily politics, it's up to us to leave those instruments of our democracy at least as strong as we found them."

Initially, Trump had planned to depart the White House a day early. But he now plans to leave on the morning of January 20. His departure aboard Marine One from the White House South Lawn will likely be visible and audible to the Bidens, who will spend the night before the inauguration at Blair House, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the executive mansion. Its use was offered to them by the State Department rather than the Trumps, who refuse to make contact with the incoming president and first lady.

Final plans for Trump's departure were still being laid a week ahead of time, but Trump has expressed interest to some in a military-style sendoff and a crowd of supporters, according to a person with whom he has discussed the matter. Whether that occurs at the White House, Joint Base Andrews or his final destination -- Palm Beach International Airport -- wasn't clear. Trump is expected to be ensconced in his Mar-a-Lago club or his nearby golf course by noon on Inauguration Day, when his term officially ends.

Having the outgoing president 1,000 miles away from the incoming one provides some logistical challenges. For instance, handoff of the nuclear football -- a 45-pound briefcase that accompanies the president everywhere he goes in case of nuclear attack -- won't be as simple as it would be if the two men were in each other's vicinity.

A person familiar with the matter said the White House Military Office will ensure there are multiple nuclear footballs -- one to accompany Trump to Florida and one that will be ready in Washington for when Biden officially becomes president. The nuclear codes Trump carries on a card alongside the football -- the so-called "biscuit" -- would no longer work past noon. 

Legal and financial troubles

Though Trump, in private, still contends he won the 2020 election, he has fully resigned himself to leaving the White House and entering life as a private citizen -- and with it the potential legal exposure and business troubles sparked by his role in inciting the riots last week.

The first order of business will be his second impeachment trial, which is now set to begin after Biden is sworn in. Trump is still enlisting lawyers to represent him during the proceedings, and appears to have soured on Rudy Giuliani, whose legal fees he has ordered aides not to pay. A band of Trump associates had worked recently to dissuade the President from listening to Giuliani because they believed he was providing him with misinformation.

Instead, Trump is looking to a new set of attorneys, including potentially John Eastman, the conservative attorney who falsely told Trump that Pence could block the certification of Biden's win. A person familiar with the matter said Eastman could join Trump's legal team defending him in the upcoming impeachment trial.

Trump's senior advisers in the White House have said they don't believe Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will vote to convict him, but is happy to let the option hang over his head during his final days in the White House, given his deep anger at the President. 

According to those around him, Trump has been more focused on potential post-presidency legal woes since well before the November election, and his worry has increased in the months since, people familiar with the matter said.

Yet he has also been lashing out at aides, allies and lawyers trying to protect him from criminal exposure following his role in inciting rioters during last week's insurrection attempt at the US Capitol. Some of his attorneys have tried to explain that his notion of a self-pardon may not hold up, which has led some inside Trump's circle to believe he is less likely to attempt it before he leaves office.

Those concerns are partly what helped convince Trump to record a video on Wednesday condemning the riots and insisting they did not reflect his political movement.

"No true supporter of mine could ever endorse political violence. No true supporter of mine could ever disrespect law enforcement or our great American flag," he said from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

Trump had seemed reluctant to tape the video, in part because he believes the carefully denunciations of his supporters make him look like he's caving to pressure to tone down his stance on the election. 

A source familiar with conversations said there was a coordinated full-court press by allies and aides, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, chief of staff Mark Meadows and senior adviser Jared Kushner to convince the President he had to come out forcefully against further violence and that if he didn't -- and another incident happened -- he would "own it." 

"Silence is not an option," the source said in describing one of the conversations. "We need to break the cycle."

After an ad-libbed video on the day of the insurrection attempt, Trump's subsequent appearances have been more tightly scripted, with heavy input from the White House counsel's office on the text. Trump has read them from teleprompters set up by the White House Communications Agency as senior officials look on, ensuring he does not diverge from the words as written.

While Trump has long fretted about his potential legal troubles, it has only been recently that he has weighed anxiously the potential business downsides to his divisive tenure. The decision by the PGA this week to strip his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf course of a championship tournament infuriated the President. 

Another discussion that could be hampered by the fallout from the riot he helped stoke is his presidential library. Before Trump's rabble-rousing speech, there had been talk of securing property in Florida and having Dan Scavino, his longtime aide, run it. But now there are questions about who would donate to Trump's library in the current climate. 

For a man highly attuned to the kind of pomp he believes affirms his elevated position in life, the abrupt removal of the PGA honor came as a blow not only to his bottom line but to his ego. And it provided an unpleasant harbinger of the life he might lead once he leaves office, without the fanfare that accompanied his every move as president.

This week has provided him a preview of sorts. He has remained behind closed doors for most days, with no cameras documenting his moves and no audiences to applaud him as he goes about his day. The circle of obsequious aides that have surrounded him for most of his term is shrinking, replaced by only a few -- such as Scavino and personnel chief Johnny McEntee -- who will remain with him until he departs the White House.

The President has been discussing his election conspiracy theories with his former chief strategist Steve Bannon -- who's facing federal fraud charges -- in recent weeks, a senior Trump adviser confirmed, as he pushes away advisers who tell him what he doesn't want to hear. 

Events that would ordinarily be open to press, such as ceremonies awarding the Medal of Freedom and National Medal of Arts, have been limited to only government cameras. 

According to one official, aides worried that Trump might respond off-the-cuff to a question about the riots and veer from the carefully scripted comments condemning the actions. They determined it was better to limit Trump's opportunities before the media.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the year of the presidential election that Trump is contesting. It is the 2020 presidential election.

This story has been updated with additional reporting. 

© 2021 Cable News Network, Inc. A WarnerMedia Company. All Rights Reserved.

[Section_31]

1 hour ago, Gnasher said:

In fairness to the Donald he's blessed us with youngsters for a lovely future. Jared, Ivanka, Donald Jr and Eric are the type of kids you just take to, 

 

 

https://www.politicususa.com/2021/01/14/donald-trump-jr-investigation.html/amp?__twitter_impression=true

Nah best thing about his kids is that they're thick as fuck. In a system where a wrong word or signature can get you a federal jail term, at least one of them is absolutely nailed on to get sent down sooner or later. The only worry is that he'll issue pardons, although at least he'll probably charge them.

[Jennings]

Not a particularly astute political insight and perhaps one that doesn't fit the prevailing mood around here but...

 

I fancy Ivanka.

[Bruce Spanner]

58 minutes ago, Jennings said:

Trump explodes

We can all but dream...

[Anubis]

 

 

[Lee909]

Read yesterday he has told staff to not put Giuliani calls through and said he isn't paying him his 20k a day fee. 

 

Also possible disarmament for him in New York. 

 

How's that for trial by combat prick 

[cloggypop]

Not paying his lawyer isn't a great look when he's going to need lawyers very soon. Some of them might already be a bit put off representing him as it is. 

[Trumo]

4 minutes ago, cloggypop said:

Not paying his lawyer isn't a great look when he's going to need lawyers very soon. Some of them might already be a bit put off representing him as it is. 

 

America will never run out of shysters.

[cloggypop]

1 minute ago, Trumo said:

 

America will never run out of shysters.

They will want paying though. 

[Lee909]

 

 

 

[cloggypop]

Not sure this is really the thread for it but the NRA has filed for bankruptcy. 

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guns/national-rifle-association-says-it-has-filed-bankruptcy-petitions-in-u-s-court-idUSKBN29K2LV

[JagSquared]

29 minutes ago, cloggypop said:

Not paying his lawyer isn't a great look when he's going to need lawyers very soon. Some of them might already be a bit put off representing him as it is. 

Hoping he represents himself. It’ll make great TV.

[Anubis]

20 minutes ago, cloggypop said:

Not sure this is really the thread for it but the NRA has filed for bankruptcy. 

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guns/national-rifle-association-says-it-has-filed-bankruptcy-petitions-in-u-s-court-idUSKBN29K2LV

They’re going on about restructuring as a not-for-profit organisation but it seems not everyone is convinced of their veracity.

 

 

[Bruce Spanner]

20 minutes ago, cloggypop said:

Not sure this is really the thread for it but the NRA has filed for bankruptcy. 

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guns/national-rifle-association-says-it-has-filed-bankruptcy-petitions-in-u-s-court-idUSKBN29K2LV

First reading of that is they’ve filed to write off deficits, which they’ll hold as expenses.

 

So they can write off their debs as cents on the dollar and then write previous debts all away under a different corp, without the previous financial baggage. 
 

In essence that company is not us, so their debts are theirs, but we have a new company. Come one come all.

 

This is good for them, I think.

[cloggypop]

He's definitely going to be needing lawyers 

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/15/politics/manhattan-da-trump-organization-family-compound-westchester/index.html

 

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-criminal-investigation/

[Bobby Hundreds]

On 09/01/2021 at 22:56, Anubis said:

You do have to admire Mrs T’s complete distain for her hubby and his gremlins.

 

 

 

 

Its weird how she's sometimes painted as an unwilling participant. She got into bed with Trump ill be fucked if his looks or personality won her heart. She wanted a man with wealth and status and he wanted a hot woman. Both got exactly what they wanted maybe not what they needed. Shes the US first lady because she's got a fit body and was more than happy to suck Trumps Flump.

[Bobby Hundreds]

5 hours ago, cloggypop said:

He's definitely going to be needing lawyers 

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/15/politics/manhattan-da-trump-organization-family-compound-westchester/index.html

 

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-criminal-investigation/

They should at least ask for payment up front.

[Section_31]

Melania is a cunt. She's utterly self absorbed. Wasn't she moaning that people were "talking about kids in cages" but didn't stop to think about her pressures, such as picking out a Christmas tree? The other day she was moaning about the riots "looking bad for her" or something.

 

Let's not forget that when she got the role as first lady and she sued the daily mail for calling her a ho, she sued them for "potential loss of earnings over the next four years".

 

These are the kinds of scum you're dealing. It's like the devil got a day release job at the pound bakery and decided to make some people, but the only ingredients he could find were onions and excrement.

 

Her ONLY saving grace is that she sounds like Ming's daughter.

 

"No Donald, not the bore worms!"

 

These bore worms are beautiful, believe me, everybody says so.

 

Twats.

[Bjornebye]

2 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

Melania is a cunt. She's utterly self absorbed. Wasn't she moaning that people were "talking about kids in cages" but didn't stop to think about her pressures, such as picking out a Christmas tree? The other day she was moaning about the riots "looking bad for her" or something.

 

Let's not forget that when she got the role as first lady and she sued the daily mail for calling her a ho, she sued them for "potential loss of earnings over the next four years".

 

These are the kinds of scum you're dealing. It's like the devil got a day release job at the pound bakery and decided to make some people, but the only ingredients he could find were onions and excrement.

 

Her ONLY saving grace is that she sounds like Ming's daughter.

 

"No Donald, not the bore worms!"

 

These bore worms are beautiful, believe me, everybody says so.

 

Twats.

Would you though? 

[Section_31]

3 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

Would you though? 

Absolutely.

[Trumo]

52 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

Melania is a cunt. She's utterly self absorbed. Wasn't she moaning that people were "talking about kids in cages" but didn't stop to think about her pressures, such as picking out a Christmas tree? The other day she was moaning about the riots "looking bad for her" or something.

 

Let's not forget that when she got the role as first lady and she sued the daily mail for calling her a ho, she sued them for "potential loss of earnings over the next four years".

 

These are the kinds of scum you're dealing. It's like the devil got a day release job at the pound bakery and decided to make some people, but the only ingredients he could find were onions and excrement.

 

Her ONLY saving grace is that she sounds like Ming's daughter.

 

"No Donald, not the bore worms!"

 

These bore worms are beautiful, believe me, everybody says so.

 

Twats.

 

Harsh on onions that.

[stringvest]

This is fab

 

 

[Bruce Spanner]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/16/if-trump-looks-like-a-fascist-and-acts-like-a-fascist-then-maybe-he-is-one

 

’Assurances that “fascism couldn’t happen here” are always appealing in Anglo-Saxon countries that think themselves immune because “it” never did. The US and UK did not experience rule by Nazism or communism in the 20th century and the ignorance our lucky histories fostered has weakened our defences in the 21st.

 

Even after all that has happened in Washington, apparently serious voices insist we cannot compare Donald Trump to any variety of fascist. Conservatives habitually say that liberals call everything they don’t like fascist, forgetting that the moral of Aesop’s fable was that the boy who cried wolf was right in the end. They used to chortle about “Trump derangement syndrome” that spreads in stages like cancer until sufferers “cannot distinguish fantasy from reality”. They have bitten their tongues now that the reality of Trumpism is deranged mobs trying to overthrow democracy.

 

Their silence was broken last week by the historian of Nazism, Richard Evans, who with the effortless ability to miss every point a professorship at Cambridge bestows, decided now was the moment to denounce his colleagues, Timothy Snyder and Sarah Churchwell. They might compare the Trump and fascist movements but “few who have described Trump as a fascist can be called real experts in the field”, he wrote in the New Statesman with an audible sniff. “Genuine specialists”, such as, and since you asked, himself, “agree that whatever else he is, Trump is not a fascist”.

Before we get to why the argument matters, I should say the New Statesman needs to expand its fact-checking department. Snyder, whose work on how democracies turn into dictatorships is essential reading, does not say that the Trump movement is “fascist”. He writes that “post-truth is pre-fascism and Trump has been our post-truth president”. Churchwell’s astonishing studies of how German Nazis and American white supremacists fed off each other are a revelation. (And I come from the old left and thought I had learned about everything that was rotten with America at my mother’s knee.) When asked, she says she too is careful and characterises the Trump movement as “neo-fascist”.

 

The use of “fascism” in political debate is both a call to arms and a declaration of war. For once you say you are fighting fascism there can be no retreat. By talking of “pre-fascism” or “neo-fascism”, you acknowledge that the F-word is not a bomb you should detonate lightly; you also acknowledge the gravity of the times.

The alternatives look like the euphemisms of formerly safe societies that, like Caliban, cannot bear to see their face in the mirror. The Trump leadership cult, the attacks on any source of information the leader does not authorise, the racist conspiracy theories, the servile media that amplify the leader’s lies are not “conservative” in any understanding of the term. How about populist? If it means anything today, populism is supporting the people against the elite. But what could be more elitist than denying the result of the people’s vote with the big lie, the Joseph Goebbels lie, that Trump won the election he lost and then inciting brainwashed followers to storm democratic institutions? Followers, I should add, who included men dressed in “Camp Auschwitz” T-shirts and waving Confederate flags and wannabe stormtroopers crying “sieg heil!” and “total negro death”. “Far right” and “extreme right” are no help. They are just polite ways of saying neo-fascist.

In his The Anatomy of Fascism, Robert Paxton, the pre-eminent authority on its ideology, wrote that the Ku Klux Klan in 1867 rather than Mussolini’s squadristi in 1920 could be seen as the first fascist movement. As with the Nazi party, the embittered officers of a defeated army formed the Klan. They mourned the defeat of the Confederacy and did not accept the legitimacy of the US government. They had uniforms, white robes rather than leather jackets, the fantasies of racial supremacy and deployed terror to maintain the subjugation of African Americans. Last week, police sources told the Washington Post they were shocked to see “former law enforcement and military personnel as well as senior business executives” among the Washington mob. If they had known the history of military and bourgeois support for fascism, they would have been less surprised. It isn’t always powered by “the left behind”.

 

Paxton said last week that he had “resisted for a long time applying the fascist label to Donald J Trump”, but Trump’s incitement of the invasion of the Capitol “removes my objection to the fascist label”.

Republicans fear assassination if they vote to impeach Trump. Rupert Murdoch’s broadcasters are delivering barely veiled threats of violent insurrection if the Democrats pursue impeachment. “We see what’s happening around this country, how 50 state houses are being threatened on Inauguration Day,” warned one. “This is the last thing you want to do.” 

I can see three objections to calling a large section of the Republican party pre-fascist. The first can be dismissed with a flick of the fingers as it comes from a self-interested right that has to pretend it is not in the grip of a deep sickness – and not only in the United States. The second is the old soothing “it can’t happen here” exceptionalism of the Anglo-Saxon west, which has yet to learn that the US and UK are exceptional in the 21st century for all the wrong reasons. The third sounds intelligent but is the dumbest of all. You should not call Trump or any other leader a pre- or neo-fascist or any kind of fascist until he has gone the whole hog and transformed his society into a totalitarian war machine.

 

The example of the stages of cancer, so beloved by believers in Trump derangement syndrome, explains the stupidity. Imagine you are a doctor looking at pre-cancerous cells or an early-stage cancer that has not grown deeply into tissue. The door bursts open and a chorus of Fox Newspresenters and Cambridge dons cry that “real experts in the field” agree that on no account should you call it cancer until it has metastasised and spread through the whole body. A competent doctor would insist on calling a fatal disease by its real name and not leave treatment until it was too late to stop it. So should you.’